Letters From A Tory Daily views on British politics and the Conservative Party from a centre-right thinker who writes letters on his blog to politicians, journalists and many others.

Welcome to ‘Letters From A Tory’, covering British politics from a conservative perspective. Please leave a comment if you have any thoughts about today’s letter, and don’t forget that you can CLICK HERE to get my letters sent to you by RSS every morning.“a charismatic guy with a Teleprompter”
- how Sarah Palin described Barack [...]

Wow.  Just a matter of hours after Obama gets humiliated in Massachusetts, he hits back in spectacular style with major banking reforms.  His proposals are twofold: first to stop banks from proprietary trading – where a bank bets on markets for their own gain, not for their customers; and second, to limit the pace of consolidation to [...]

Dear readers,
Today your task is to decide which leader is in the biggest mess.  You get a choice of three!
1. Gordon Brown: As we all know, Geoff Hoon, the former Defence Secretary, and Patricia Hewitt, the former Health Secretary, have written to all Labour MPs calling for the leadership issue to be sorted out “once and for all” [...]

Thanks to Paul Baines for emailing this across. You can even buy a full size print version from his website.

Dear Jack Straw,
You will no doubt be glad that most of the media is focusing on the Glasgow East by-election this morning, because it gets you off the hook.  Over the past several months, away from the public eye, you have instigated some of the brutal attacks on civil liberties ever seen under this Labour [...]

From the Telegraph:
The decline in Barack Obama’s popularity since July has been the steepest of any president at the same stage of his first term for more than 50 years.  Gallup recorded an average daily approval rating of 53 per cent for Mr Obama for the third quarter of the year, a sharp drop from [...]

“It was because we would like to support what he is trying to achieve”
- Thorbjoern Jagland, head of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, clarifying that the award can apparently be handed out to people who haven’t actually helped achieve peace anywhere.  It was announced today that Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for “his extraordinary [...]

“I bring you greetings from a person who is called…a person who is sun-tanned…Barack Obama.  You wouldn’t believe it, but they go sunbathing at the beach together – his wife is also sun-tanned.”
- Silvio Berlusconi, who has again referred to Barack Obama as “suntanned” during a rally in Milan on Sunday.  He said his rapport with [...]

Just look at how few people at the UN care what Brown thinks.  Not only were the back rows completely empty for his speech yesterday, even the front rows were poorly populated.

Dear Gordon Brown,
I was expecting to have to wait until the Labour Party conference before the problems began.  Boy, was I wrong about that.  A string of embarrassing incidents have now struck in the past 48 hours that further undermine confidence in your role as Prime Minister.  Needless to say, you deserve no sympathy for [...]

Dear readers,
As the debate over Obama’s healthcare reforms in America becomes increasingly heated, perhaps you had – like me – cast your mind back to Michael Moore’s documentary called ‘Sicko’ that tried to explain in no uncertain terms why American healthcare was a disgrace (and why, incidentally, the NHS was so wonderful).  Sadly for Michael, [...]

Dear Barack Obama,
What a shocking week or so it’s been for you.  Having been caught up in a stupid racism row over a police arrest, you are still desperate to find some magical way of funding all of your healthcare reforms while watching your popularity fall to its lowest level since you became President.  After [...]

From The Telegraph: Barack Obama’s honeymoon period appears to be coming to an end in America as polls have shown his ratings have fallen to their lowest point yet.  USA Today/Gallup survey suggested that six months into his presidency, his popularity was lower than George W Bush’s at the same stage of his tenure.  mid [...]

Dear Barack Obama,
Despite the economic downturn, you are still rightly committed to creating a universal health insurance system in America.  Seeing as it formed the backbone of your election platform, voters would not be particularly impressed if you walked away from such a bold plan.  Even though your reforms could save over one trillion dollars in the [...]

“We will try to topple him.  We will work to recruit all those who are loyal to the Land of Israel. He cannot lie to his voters.”
- Arieh Eldad, head of the right-wing National Union party in Israel, who is threatening to bring down Benjamin Netanyahu’s government if he says ‘yes’ to a Palestinian state in a [...]

“Obama is destined to save the great republic of America and dethrone the overpaid despots”
- Gordon Brown shortly after the G20 summit the description of Barack Obama in an upcoming issue of a US comic book, which has been given the title “The Righteous Retribution of Barack the Barbarian”.  The US President’s slightly more violent alter ego spends [...]

“Everyone’s talking about it: dark inside white!”
- the slogan being used to advertise Obama-branded ice creams in Russia.   The adverts have been labelled ‘racist’ by some critics as the ice cream bars have a chocolate-flavoured centre embedded in a layer of vanilla, although the creators said it should be seen as a joke.  Other ads featuring [...]

“The question of who Mr Obama really is, and what he truly believes, underlies the growing list of Very Odd Things that seem to be happening under his administration. Among the most perplexing of these mysteries is why, when he went to such pains to assemble a huge and widely experienced team of White House [...]

“He is an interloper, a usurper, a fake, a scam artist, a Chicago crook, a recipient of bribes and gratuitous income for which he paid no tax, a socialist (perhaps only a communist or Marxist), and a grave danger to the future of the America that I love and have protected since I was 17 [...]

Should this…

…really have led to this?…

The protestors are following the lead of Rev Al Sharpton (front centre with grey hair), a populist civil rights campaigner. The New York Post has apologised to those offended by an editorial cartoon that critics said was racist because it likened President Barack Obama to a chimpanzee. But in its public [...]

“President Barack Obama is popular for now. But his programme for reinvigorating the economy is not. Indeed, it is a sign of the dislocation between politics and everyday life that while the $787bn stimulus package that Obama is expected to sign today is being hailed as a great victory, nobody truly believes it will work.”
- [...]

“He has been an example for so many people around the world of what dedicated leadership can accomplish.”
- Barack Obama, who obviously hasn’t read a British newspaper in years, comments on Tony Blair

Dear Barack Obama,
So today is the day that the first black President walks into the White House.  Last night, you hailed Martin Luther King Jr as “not just a dreamer, but a doer” who worked tirelessly for change, and I’m sure you aspire to achieve the same recognition in history that he received.  With President Bush [...]

“Hmmm.  If I make Hillary Secretary of State, is that going to make her more of a pain in the **** or less of a pain in the ****?”

For supporters of Barack Obama, it has been the perfect week and they must have enjoyed every minute of it.  For those who didn’t want to see Obama become President, it has been a tough few days as his victory in the US election was confirmed - but some people are still refusing to accept that it’s [...]